Vantaggi
Great pay for everyone with the same job title. £7.40 for all sales assistants no matter how old you were/how long you had been there. Of course, amazing products and ethical principles. Product training/freebies for every new range. 50% staff discount from day one. Other amazing staff bonuses such as paid time off for your birthday, gifts from head office all of the time. Flexible with hours. Excellent communication between in-store management and their sales staff. My management team were absolutely flawless, genuinely the most hard-working, appreciative and supportive group of people I have ever met in my life. They were all fantastic at what they did and definitely what keeps the company afloat. All issues I ever had/saw working there were down to head office entirely. The store I worked for was an absolute dream, can't fault them at all. I honestly doubt I'll ever have another job as amazing as this one!
Svantaggi
Sometimes a bit hectic especially over Christmas time, but that is to be expected. Mistakes with deliveries from head office were literally a daily occurrence. Products would be missing, delivery vans would sometimes go missing entirely, or we'd be told on the day of a delivery that we were to no longer stock some products and had no say in it. Head office would get rid of some Christmas gift boxes once they'd reached their target sales even though they were still selling really well, which made no sense to me. My store was absolutely fantastic, but I had been for interviews before at other ones in my area that were no where near as good. It is definitely store dependent, no real consistency. They do hire a lot of temps around Christmas time (I'm talking 20-30 for one of their smaller stores) and the turn over of staff is pretty obscene, I don't know why they don't save time/money by keeping staff members on instead of training up new ones. Progression into the company from Christmas temp isn't great (stores tend to permanently hire three out of every 20 or so temps) but I sense that once you're permanent, it isn't difficult to progress.